Monday, April 30, 2012

Our final dinner in England started well. We both had seven-item plates of yummy Middle Eastern noshes. However, the main courses were not complex enough in flavor to be interesting. And there was a belly dancer.

She wasn't terribly attractive, and she was rail thin. She couldn't actually roll her hips or her belly. She did a sort of funk dance, and persuaded elderly gentlemen to get up and dance. Then she wanted the young men, then the women... I firmly refused. I love to dance, but not on display.

The next morning, driving up to the airport, I snapped these 'comparison' pics to give you all a sense of the size differential, British to U.S. car. The red car is a Toyota Yaris.

The weather was awful, and the picture was take through the windshield, but I hope you get the sense: Cars tend to be Yaris sized!

Victor remembers this boat from a prior trip that included Portsmouth. I had never been to Portsmouth before.

After we toured the docks, we walked back to the hotel. Altogether it was a hike of about 5 miles, like the one we took at Tintagel. However, Tintagel was pasture land, soft underfoot. Pounding the pavement on this trek made my tender foot and the calf above it ache for DAYS.

Anyway, back to Victory: We didn't go aboard (the cost of tickets was an annual charge with the lure being, Come back any time this year!). Even the outside was mighty impressive, although the masts have been sized down.

The docks are actually a big museum, to which admission is around sixty dollars, if you want to board any of the boats. Here's where the Mary Rose comes in. I've been reading about excavation and preservation of that wreck forever. And it wasn't even on display! Folks are *still* working on preserving it, I guess.

The weather was somewhat iffy, with the sky spitting rain every so often.

I didn't get to see the figurehead artifacts from wrecks, on Tresco. However, about every quarter-mile as you walked toward the docks in Portsmouth, you'd come across a figurehead. I don't know what became of the ships to which they once were mounted.